The life of Elder Nathan McCook, called to the England London South Mission.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Haywards Heath- Early Fall

Elder McCook and Elder Blumenthal

Getting ready to ride!

After nearly 7 months in the southern area and rural country of Cornwall, Elder McCook has transferred to about 35 miles south of London in the Sussex County.Our area includes Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill, among a few other villages around here. We get around mostly on bike (which is crazy considering how hilly it is here. Let's just say my legs feel like corned beef right now, or really really sore in other words.) We also take the trains, if we're going to Burgess Hill, which are really good. Public transportation in the UK is the best, it schools America, but that's because everything is close to each other here really and you need a car to get anywhere useful in America. Haywards Heath is not really a suberb of London at all, it's just a town. Everything inside the M25 ring road is considered "Greater London", but I'm not too far away. But I must say that the atmosphere, although like a town, is kind of like London as everyone that lives here works in London or Crawley or bigger built up areas. Lots of Indians, Africans and people from everywhere. The MTC is way up in Chorley, Lancashirewhich is possibly a 4 or 5 hours drive from here.Being DL in such a district is interesting, as I oversee five sister missionaries (yikes! no just kidding), and two office elders, as well as my comp. I don't feel as connected with missionaries in the district as we used to have nightly accounting, where we talk about our day, but now that's just once a week, on Sundays. We're probablygoing to have lots more Zone P-days and stuff, which should be really fun. They keep it simple usually, with ping pong and chair football and food or something like that.My comp is Elder Blumenthal from Henderson, Nevada, and seems like a cool bloke. I'm also follow up training him.This past week was rather eventful as we locked ourselves out of our flat. We tried to get Calum, one of our cool recent converts to break in through the letter box, but that didn't work. Basically, to cut a long story short, we spent the night at the Zone Leader's, went to church all scruffy and stinky without a suit jacket, and ended up getting a small kid in the ward to climb through our bathroom window and unlock the door for us. No more leaving the flat without the keys!We've got several people we're working with. Abbey, a 16 year old girl we're working with, really wants to get baptized, but her Mom won't let her yet. Wayne and Stash (that's a nickname) are also really interested but they need to get married first. There's some other investigators we're working with, most of them referrals from the recent converts Calum and Hannah (they're so cool). Calum and Hannah were met tracting and Calum's Dad is a member of the church, but Calum fell away a long time ago. When the missionaries explained the Plan of Salvation, he understood it immediately and loved it and always talks about it with everyone, and all his friends. So he told his partner Hannah, "I'm joining the Church, and if you don't, then we're splitting up." He was willing to give up everything for the Church. So they got married, were baptized and supplied us with at least five referrals, all of whom are being taught currently.